On any given day, there were usually five girls sitting around in the common room, watching Vanderpump Rules, or Real Housewives or a number of reality television shows, while they all sat around and gossiped and chatted. They were teenagers, so most of them could still eat what they wanted and stay slim, and they did. They would eat pizzas, Chinese food ordered from Uber Eats, or burgers from In and Out brought in by a Door Dash guy. The reason why there were only five girls at a time hanging out in the common room eating junk food was because the other girls were out working. That was how Carl worked with the girls. He put 15 of them on the “floor,” while five of them got to stay behind. In other words, the girls worked in shifts.
In addition to the common area, there was also a sunroom. This was a very small room that just had a couple of leather chairs. And Regina was starting to understand that Britney preferred to be alone in the sunroom. While the other girls were sitting and getting loud and dancing around the room to music videos, or having play fights, Britney was sitting quietly reading in the sunroom.
Regina knew that Britney was going to be ripe for her idea.
One day, about five weeks after Regina came to work for Carl, she found Britney in the sunroom. “Hey, kid. What’s going on?”
Britney just shrugged her shoulders, and said nothing.
“How come you’re not out there with the other girls?” Regina asked her.
“I don’t know. Those other girls, they kind of get on my nerves. I mean, Morgan’s okay, so is Brianna and Aisha. But the rest of the girls, I don’t know. Sometimes I think I really don’t belong here.” She blinked her eyes.
Britney, like every other girl in the house, was a stunningly beautiful child. She had chestnut hair with auburn streaks, long dark eyelashes, blue eyes that were slightly almond-shaped, cheekbones that could cut glass, full lips and a long and graceful neck. She was one girl who Regina could see was being broken down by the experience. Regina knew that some of the girls were more affected by what was happening than other ones were. She didn’t know if all of them knew how badly they were being exploited, but she felt that Britney was acutely aware of it.
Regina opened her mouth. She had worked on gaining Britney’s trust, and, likewise, she was starting to feel that she could trust Britney as well. “Britney. If you and I had a little talk, you promise not to tell anybody about what I’m saying to you?”
Britney nodded her head, and Regina shut the French doors that led from the sunroom to the common room. The sounds of shrieking girls in the common room were immediately silenced when Regina shut those doors.
Britney looked at the closed doors, then looked at Regina, and Regina could see that there was both fear and curiosity in those eyes.
“Don’t be afraid. But I needed to talk to you about what you just said. You just said that you didn’t feel that you belonged here. Right?”
Britney nodded her head again. “Yes. I did say that. I don’t feel like I belong here. I feel like I was meant to do something more than this. I don’t really know what. I know that I’m making good money here. And I don’t know how I would live outside of here. I mean, you and Jacqueline take such good care of me and everybody else. But I don’t like what I’m doing with those men. I don’t like it at all. It makes me sick. That’s the reason why I’ve not been working lately. I told Carl that I needed some time off, and he let me have a few weeks off.”
Britney was breathing heavily, and Regina knew that she was on the verge of breaking down in tears.
Regina put her hand in Britney’s thick dark hair. “Let me tell you about what I was doing when I was your age. My old man, he died. He was shot dead by the side of the road by guy he was high on PCP and on a countrywide crime spree. After that, my mom, she didn’t want me. She took me from one place to another, from one man to another. One of her guys, he raped me. So I split. I split, and I lived on the streets, and I met a guy named Michael. He took me in, and he put me to work on the streets. I prostituted for him, he got me a job at a strip club too, and all the time, all the time I was doing that, I wasn’t really doing it. I was checked out. You know, I would never look a guy in the eye. I would always look at the ceiling. I used to count the bumps on a popcorn ceiling while these men were doing whatever they were doing with me. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I didn’t know any other way of living, you know? I didn’t know any other way of living.”
Britney’s eyes were getting wider and wider as Regina told her story. “What did you do?”
“I ended up in prison. I finally popped Michael. He was beating on me. And, I got out of prison. I got a new lawyer who was able to show the jury that I had reason to pop Michael. Personally, I think I should’ve gotten a medal from somebody, not a prison sentence. But that’s what happened to me. Now, I’m out. And, again, what I say to you here cannot go out of this room, but I’ve made it a mission of mine to help people who are in my situation. I’d like to help you out of your situation.”
“What do you mean? How can you help me out of my situation?” She shook her head. “I’m only 14. I can’t go back to my home. And I don’t want to go into the system. I heard too many bad stories about kids who go into the system and get locked in closets, and not fed by their foster families. Here I have friends and a beautiful room and all the food I want to eat. I can’t leave this place.”
“Oh, but you can. Trust me, you can.”
She looked doubtful. “If I don’t work here, I won’t have money. I won’t be able to live on my own. I’d have to go into the system, and the social work people, they’ll have to contact my parents. That can’t happen. My father, he was doing bad things to me. He was both raping me and beating on me. He’s denied it. Every time somebody has investigated him, he denies it, and they believe him. He’s a judge. A federal judge, Southern District of New York. Nobody will ever do anything to him. If I can’t make money to support myself, I’ll have to go into the system, and then I’ll be right back with my dad.”
Britney was shaking like a leaf, and Regina’s heart went out to her. Regina was there, right where she was, at one time. Couldn’t stay at her home, couldn’t live on her own, had to do what she had to to survive. Regina actually preferred prison to the life she had with her mother, after her father died, and to the life she had with Michael, prostituting herself and getting regularly beaten both by Michael and by her johns. Her life was filled with such darkness and despair for so many years that she never imagined a way out. She found a way out, thank God, thanks to Avery, but if Avery didn’t give her a chance, who would have?
So, she knew what Britney was thinking and feeling. She got it. She was just going to have to convince Britney to take a chance that life could be better on the outside. She had to ask for Britney’s trust that she could show her a way out.
“Britney, here’s the thing. What Carl is doing to you is wrong. He’s exploiting you, and you can file a lawsuit against him. You and all the girls can sue him in a court of law, and you can get a lot of money out of him.”
Britney’s eyes got wider and wider as Regina talked to her about what she wanted to do. “I could get a lot of money out of him?” she asked. “But I’m hiding here. I’m hiding from law enforcement and my parents and everybody who might try to make me go back to my home. I’m safe here from them. If I get involved in a lawsuit, I won’t be, will I?”
“You’re a minor,” Regina said. “The media won’t expose you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No, that’s not what I’m worried about,” Britney said. “But, now that you mention it, I would be afraid that this whole thing would get out into the papers. I’m worried that if I did something like that, Carl would call my parents and tell them where I am. He told me that he would always protect me from them. If I leave, then they’re going to find out where I am, and they’ll be out here looking for me. They can’t find me.” She took a deep breath. “They just can’t find me.”
Regina suddenly understood that what s
he wanted to do was going to be more difficult than she had anticipated. Britney was a trial balloon. She seemed to be the most vulnerable of all the girls, and possibly the person who might lead the way towards an exodus and a series of lawsuits that could bring this whole thing down.
At this point, she had to only hope that Britney wouldn’t tell anybody about what Regina was asking of her. If she did, then that could cause a lot of problems. For one, she would be gone, and she wouldn’t be able to talk to any of the other girls. She would have failed. That was the reason why she had to proceed gingerly with talking to vulnerable girls, because if she talked to any one of them, and that girl let it slip to the others, the whole plan would come tumbling down.
She was going to have to figure out a way to address Britney’s concern for her own safety. Britney was right, unfortunately. Carl would go to her parents and send her back to them, and, since nobody believed her about her abuse allegations against her father, because her father was a powerful judge, then they wouldn’t believe her now, either. Not only that, but Regina had to admit that if it came down to the girls filing a lawsuit against Carl, they all would be in danger. Carl would stop them by any means possible. He had already shown that he possibly would be able to get away with murder. These girls were all off the grid, aside from some of the ones who were sent here by their parents, so Carl could get away with killing most of them.
Carl probably wouldn’t do the dirty work, but he certainly could give the deed to the Ivanov family. They were ruthless. Murdering is what they did with impunity. That was the reason why Carl was partnering with them. They were his enforcer. They were the ones who kept everybody in line.
She was going to have to try something else to get to where she wanted to go.
All she needed was one girl. Just one. But she felt like she tried with Britney, and she had to work the whole thing much more circumspect. She had to be careful.
“Listen, Britney, please don’t tell anybody about our talk. Okay?”
She nodded her head and said nothing.
Regina got up and went into the common room, where there were four girls who were laying around on various couches and bean bags. Some series was showing on Netflix, and about half the girls were watching it, and half were doing other things. One girl was braiding another girl’s hair. Another was giving a pedicure to one of the girls. Several of them were eating pizza and gabbing.
Regina went out to the pool area, where several girls were swimming. There already were several men out there with them. One old guy had his arm around a young girl’s back while they both hung onto the side of the pool. Another old guy was sitting on a lounge chair, chatting with a couple of girls who were sitting together on a different lounge chair.
Regina worried that she blew it. Girls talked too much. They tended to gossip about whatever was going on in their lives, and she knew that the other girls were going to ask Britney about what she and Britney were talking about behind closed doors for all that time.
She was going to have to approach the entire thing in a different way.
Just then, she had an idea.
She went to Carl and explained that she had to leave for the afternoon. He let her go, asking her to be back for the evening’s events, and she got into her car.
She was going to head to the courthouse to find some records. And then she was going to head to the penitentiary. Her idea was a Hail Mary of sorts, but, at this point, she was going to have to take what she could get.
Chapter 10
Avery - June 1998
After Becky told me about what she was doing with this Carl Williams, I became afraid for her. It didn’t sound kosher to me, not at all.
But there was something that was bothering me even more then her apparent obsession with a much older man. I realized that there was a good possibility that she had a drug problem.
The thing of it was, Becky was very open with me about the things that she was up to when I was not around. And it wasn’t just the fact that she had kids from her school come over, when her parents were not there, and I knew that they had smoked marijuana. I also knew that more than a few of them snorted cocaine in the home. And I tried to look the other way about that. I didn’t really care about the marijuana. As far as I was concerned, it was no worse than alcohol. And I knew that lots of kids in my high school, let alone in Becky’s upscale private school, were into smoking marijuana. Big deal. Kids are going to do what kids are going to do.
But the cocaine thing, that was something else entirely. I was vaguely aware that cocaine can kill you the first time you try it. That made me afraid to ever try it.
“Listen, you’re such a square. My dad does it. I know he does it. I came home one night after a party, and he was sitting in the living room, and had some lines right out in front of him. Right there on the coffee table. And he was wasted. He had to have been extremely wasted, because he saw me coming in the door, and he didn’t even try to put it away. I mean, I’m surprised he didn’t invite me to try it with him. I really was hoping that he would.”
I had a hard time believing that any father would do that. But then again, maybe I shouldn’t have had a hard time believing it. Pete Whitfield was the type of dad who had no problem giving his daughter a gin and tonic while she lay in the pool. And he apparently was the type a guy who had no problem giving his daughter cocaine when she wanted it.
“What about your mom, what does she say about your father getting high like that?”
Becky just shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. She’s too busy with her boyfriend. Yes, she has a boy toy on the side. I’ve met him. When my dad goes out of town, she brings this guy around. He’s some dude by the name of Antonio something. My dad knows all about that guy, too. And I don’t think he cares that my mom is getting strange, because he gets strange too. Come on, don’t you know that this is how the other half lives? Are you not aware of this fact?”
I felt incredibly naïve. We were only 15 years old. This should’ve been a time of first dates, first kisses, studying hard in school so that we could get into the best college. I felt sad that Becky was growing up long before she should have been. She had terrible role models in her parents. And I knew that she was going to think that all of this was normal. It was normal for people to be married, yet having affairs. It was normal to be wasted on drugs right in front of your kids.
But it wasn’t normal. It should never be considered to be normal.
Just then, while Becky told me about a party she was going to go to at a friend’s house, where there was going to be hard drugs that were going to be shared by all, she got up to answer her cell phone. She looked at the screen, and rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry, but I have to take this. I keep telling this guy to leave me the hell alone, but he won’t take the hint. But I’m gonna have to tell him again.”
She shut her door, and I could hear her talking loudly on the other side. “I told you, never to call me again. I tried to explain to you that I don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t know why you can’t get this through your head.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then Becky started to talk loudly. “I know, I know. I know that you’re my supplier. But you have to know that I can find other people to supply me with what I need as well. I don’t need you. I don’t need you at all. Quite frankly, you creep me out. Now, are you gonna stop calling me, or are you not?”
I could almost see Becky rolling her eyes while she spoke on the phone with this guy, whoever he was. “Oh? I guess that’s my answer then, right? You aren’t going to stop calling me. Well maybe I should tell your dad about what you’re doing here. I don’t think he would be very happy about it.”
Another long pause, and then Becky started talking even louder. “Listen, you cock-sucker, when I tell you you need to leave me alone, then I mean it. Don’t force me to change my number.”
And then, Becky apparently hung up on him. At least I deduced that much because
she was no longer speaking, and then she came out of the room. “I’m sorry. Listen, I have to get going. I’m supposed to see Carl tonight. He’s having a party, and I’m supposed to be one of the guests of honor.”
I wanted to go to the party with her. I wanted to see what was going on. “Hey, maybe I could come with you?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not your kind of scene. Trust me on this. Well, you have fun tonight doing whatever you’re doing. I’ll probably see you Monday. Carl wants me to go ahead and stay the whole weekend.”
The next thing I knew, Becky was getting ready to go to some party. She dressed really sexy for this party. Tiny little dress that showed off all of her assets, and high heels. Her strawberry hair was piled up on her head, and she put on so much makeup it looked like you couldn’t take it off with a chisel. One thing was for sure, she looked a lot older than what she was.
And I just had a sinking feeling that Becky was heading for disaster.
Chapter 11
Avery - Modern Day
I felt sick when I got the results back from the computers I sent in for forensic analysis. While Nathan did find that the computers that I and Christian took from Max’s house did have child pornography on them, he also found that there was not any kind of DNA or fingerprints he could get off of it.
“Looks like it’s been cleaned pretty good,” he said.
Of course it was cleaned pretty good, I thought. Turns out that Paul might not have been as stupid as I thought. Now, I knew that Paul’s DNA was in that house. If cops went in there, they would find his hairs and skin cells all over the place. But how would I be able to prove that he was the one accessing the child porn? How would anybody be able to prove that? If Paul was smart, he probably invited other people over to this house, so that there would be a plethora of DNA samples that would be found in that house, should the FBI conduct a raid.
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